• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Unusual winter weather.

Properly dressed a long time, the key is not to get your under garments damp or wet.
It will warm to minus 14 or so if there is no cloud cover. When working outside with tools etc. I wear cotton gloves which I change often when wet.
 
The air temperature in northern Northumberland has been hovering about 1°C to -3°C (depending on sun or shadow) for several days, but, and it's a substantial but, the wind chill today is significant: -7°C overall, and that fell about 4 degrees more with sunset. The ground is like iron.
S.
 
duke said:
Properly dressed a long time, the key is not to get your under garments damp or wet.
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Most basic rule for serious hikers and mountaineers. Don't sweat!! Pace yourself to stay dry - and therefore, warm. Sometimes, a fine decision /distinction has to be made re going on (higher up, or further across, the mountain) to destination, or turning back. The hill will still be there next time.
 
RogerS said:
Beautiful warm sunny day here 😎
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Which part of Somerset? My part was frig'n cold - but the sun did shine. Mid afternoon I went to but some frost protection cover on some of my Bonsai trees (ones with 'soft' but thick roots like the Ginko biloba, yews and Japanese maples) with being in pots and - x° forecasts for the next few days. I came in about 30 minutes later and my fingers felt frozen 😩. Mind... certainly 'warmer' than @dukeis experiencing! 🫣🥶
 
I left the snow behind in New Zealand over fifty years ago and have been reading this thread and feeling very un-envious. On Christmas day Western Australia had the worlds fifteen hottest towns and today is forecast to get up to 33C.
Cheers,
Geoff.
 
BTW, it's salt, not grit, and it requires crushing by vehicle tyres to be effective.
 
duke said:
When was the last big snow, was it 1963 or 1964. My wife told me things were at a stand still for a long time?
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Most of the UK grinds to a halt at the first sign of snow.

The last memorable winter weather event was probably February 2018 when we were hit by the Beast from the East. If I recall correctly it only lasted about 5 days though.
 
Cabinetman said:
And the trend is even colder! How much time can you spend out at that temp Scott?
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Depends a bit on what you mean by "survive". I once spent all day standing around on a frozen lake when it was -42. I survived in the sense that it didn't kill me but I did get very ill.

Our winter weather continues to be weird. No snow at Christmas and in general unseasonably warm. Normal service was resumed on Thursday when it was -18, and we got a bit of snow (not much). Yesterday it was back up to -9, then today it is -22. All over the place, but the forecast is that it will get colder for the next week or 2.

Our son has just bought his first house and we were there yesterday hanging wallpaper. I took this pic through his living room window:
E4.jpg
 
RogerS said:
Our basset hounds didn’t…too long outside and an icicle would form on the end of their todgers :ROFLMAO:
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Once did a home visit to one of our clients and saw masses of dog hair on a mat under the hallway radiator.The dog hated cold weather and had to be dragged out for its daily dump.
It was a Husky...
 
Doug said:
1963
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81 into 82
Our village was cut off to anything but tractors so had three weeks off high school.In return the pipes had burst and flooded the wooden floors so another six weeks off .
Magic times.
 
@duke was asking between two years 1963 or 1964.
I wasn’t saying we’ve not had bad winters since though 1963 is generally considered the worst winter in living memory, it was the last time the river Thames froze enough to be walked on.
 
Started snowing on Christmas Day, or was it Boxing Day?
Didn’t thaw until March.
I was ten and still had to walk two miles to school, my parents gave me bus fare (1.5p) , but it was only to be used if the weather got really bad 🙂
 
fuse said:
Once did a home visit to one of our clients and saw masses of dog hair on a mat under the hallway radiator.The dog hated cold weather and had to be dragged out for its daily dump.
It was a Husky...
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Our decorator told us about a basset in a house where he was working. The dog lay across the threshold of the door he wanted to paint. Unsure of the dog, he grabbed hold of the rug that the dog was lying on and dragged rug and dog away from the door to give himself the room he needed. He went out to the van to get some paint and when he got bck the basset was back by the door :ROFLMAO:
 
-10 C in the workshed today. Ice on the inside of the house windows. Lovely clear skies again. Doesn’t look like the ground will thaw at all this week. Around this time last year we couldn’t drive out because of the thin snow & slippy ice, but so dry right now, it’s just sparkles on the ground.

We’re currently 5 C colder than the closest Met weather forecast. We’re cold because we’re in the hills, but we’re colder because we’re in a dip, not right at the top.
 
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In '63 I was at boarding school in Wilhelmshaven, Germany - father being in the British Army at that time. We still had to go to/from the school from the boarding houses and I remember (now vaguely) the dyke between the boys quarters and the North Sea freezing over - seeing gulls with blocks of ice around their legs. PE teacher was a 'bar steward' having us go on cross country runs - we'd come back blue (literally) and have to shower...

As for "unusual" weather... We moved up to West Yorkshire, edge of Saddleworth Moor, to renovate a derelict smallholding farmhouse. March 27th 1981 - my 30th birthday. Odd patches of snow in various places but nothing to worry about. Easter came, beautiful hot weather, couple of piglets got sunburn... Come early May - three day blizzard... couldn't get any vehicles out via the dirt track access until 12th May. Snow filled the gulley/track roadway to 8ft~10ft depth as it was blown over from the top fields. You hoped you where walking along the top of the dry stone walls - until you put a foot wrong and ended with leg crutch deep. Unusual weather for May 1981... Some following *winters* were just as bad - that May gave us a taster. Living in Park Home type caravans while waiting for plans approval and doing the work.
 
Talking of working around dogs 3 & 1/2 years ago I fitted a kitchen & the folks had this 5 month old puppy

IMG_20220714_092054608_HDR.jpeg

He’s a cross between a Rottweiler & Tibetan Mastiff if I remember correctly, he was huge back then but really took to me so spent most of the days under my feet.
I went to do a little job just before this Xmas & thankfully he still remembers me as he’s now 9 stone & the biggest dog I think I’ve ever seen.
 
fuse said:
81 into 82
Our village was cut off to anything but tractors so had three weeks off high school.In return the pipes had burst and flooded the wooden floors so another six weeks off .
Magic times.
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Must of been that year that many villages in Norfolk got cut off.
My job was to taxi the 3 and sometimes 4 JCB drivers to there machines in various parts of North West Norfolk to clear the roads. Most of these roads where between hedge rows and the snow would drift super deep.
My taxi was an old Zetor tractor, no heating in any of the machines, they where very long and cold days.
 
Gritter driver had a car following him closely for an hour and a half.
He got out to see what was going on.
The girl in the car told him her dad had said " if you get caught in a snowstorm always follow a gritter "
That's fine love,the driver said,but we've only got Sainsbury's car park left to do now.
 
fuse said:
81 into 82
Our village was cut off to anything but tractors so had three weeks off high school.In return the pipes had burst and flooded the wooden floors so another six weeks off .
Magic times.
Click to expand...
Road closures due to snow and not going to high school was also the best time for me.
 
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